RMOTR

RMOTR

About

About

RMOTR school offers 4-week online Python and Django coding classes where students interact with teachers, mentors, and classmates remotely. Students attend 3-hour long scheduled classes three times a week, complete assignments, and work on projects with classmates. The class includes 50+ hours of real coding, 12+ real projects, and mentors available to answer questions at any time.

Data Science with Python

A fully remote course, but with two LIVE classes per week + unlimited mentorship. Learn to use Python to automate every mundane task and perform data analysis with the most popular tools and libraries: Pandas, Matplotlib, Bokeh, Scrapy, etc.
It's a 3-month course, led by a real instructor, meeting two times per week in live classes to help keep yourself accountable. Our course is highly practical, you won't learn just Python, but to interact with the whole environment: git, github, test driven developments, deployments, code reviews, etc.

Course Details

Deposit

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Financing

Monthly payments available.

Payment Plan

Monthly: $349. Bundle (4 months): $1099.

Minimum Skill Level

Basic python skills

Prep Work

All the prep work is provided by us.

Web Development with Django

Our "Web Development with Django" course is great for Python developers that are willing to get a job as Web developers or want to create their our products/startups. You will start with a quick overview of all the Django concepts, and jump directly into the most advanced features of the framework. We dedicate a big part of the course to teach you about HTTP concepts, MVC frameworks and RESTful architectures. You will be writing an entire RESTful API using the well know "django-rest-framework" library. The program aims to teach you things that you won't find in most of the common resources, like: good practices based on experience, conventions, most used tools, building reusable Django apps and uploading them to pypi, deploying your Django app or API, etc.

This course gave me a lot of knew knowledge about python and tools surrounding work with python that I had no idea about! Another added benefit of the course was the community of RMOTR, which is filled with professionals and interesting individuals!

Whatever course organized by Rmotr.com it is not just a course. For me, it has been almost a 'life experience': nice people, great mentors, exemplary organization. Coding is a challenge, and Rmotr.com gave me the tools to go one (almost two) step(s) further.

I tried many different ways of learning Python online (Udemy, Codecademy, and many other). Many of them are really cool, and I also learnt some topics. But, what I liked the most about RMOTR's program is the teachers and mentors interaction. That's what makes these programs differentiate from other self-paced solo-learning ones. I loved that.
Most of the written comunication was exclusively on slack. I didn't like that. I'd like annoucements to come in email too.

I found particularly interesting how all lessons and classes were detailed thought and talked about specific topics or practices that is not easy to find in books or surfing Internet. That's what I expected to get from an instructor-lead course like this. Everything else can be found online.

My local timezone didn't match very well with class times, but that's actually my personal issue. Sometimes it was hard for me to attend classes on time, or stay awake during the whole class time.

I signed up for the web development track and they immediately failed to meet even the most basic assumptions. Their platform appears to be about average but it was so buggy that I was submitting tickets several times a day trying to get them to fix it. From there it's worse because they don't respond in a timely fashion. Additionally, their "unlimited mentor support" really means a couple nights a week and if you're lucky you might get help on a weekend.

I'm a very experienced developer in other languages and have a little experience in python.

I give them a flat F for failing to think this through. It very much feels like something they're running out of their basement to make some side cash.

Well I actually didn't get the chance to try their courses because they failed to attend our very first session!
I was scheduled for an interview regarding their Data Science course, and they even sent me 2 reminders on the day of the interview, then guess what, RMOTR interviewer didn't show up?!
I spent the next 30 mins hoping someone will show up, I even checked the time and date again just to make sure I didn't miss anything.
I also used their live chatting service, no response there as well!
A horoble experience without ever attending a single session!

After taking the introduction to python course, I'm not sure that the other reviewers took the same course I did. Because of the scheduled course times and promises of adding projects to our github profiles, I assumed this was a well-structured course with clear goals and expectations, but this course felt disorganized and disjointed. The syllabus is a bulleted list with no description of lessons or assignments, no dates. The lectures left me feeling unprepared for the assignments, and the lectures were very short compared to what I expected (often ending quite early). I expected 4 hours of lecture material prepared each week, but at least two of those hours were for working on assigments (as individuals or groups). Working in groups was extremely inconvenient, and I would have preferred about triple the amount of individual assignments during the first 3-4 weeks of the course, and then work on larger projects as a group (or individual, if preferred) during the last couple weeks once we all got used to working with github and the IDE, and comfortable with the overall flow of the course.

There was a distinct lack of awareness or interest in accessibility: transcripts are not provided for the lectures (I asked), and there is a heavy reliance on Google hangouts for voice and video communication. The teacher hopped around a lot when sharing his screen, flipflopping between tabs and windows, which made it very difficult to follow. He was very receptive when I brought it up to him, but the fact that I even had to bring it up (and the fact that providing transcripts is not something they will do) told me a lot. A RMOTR employee in the slack chat also used disabled slurs and did not respond when I messaged them privately.

The slides are provided for the lectures, but they are not super helpful, and they are white text on a blue background, and therefore not easily printable or useful for note-taking.

The course was advertised as a good introduction for anyone who wants to learn Python, and listed Codecademy's Python course as a good starting point and prerequesite. Other than Codecademy, I have very little coding experience, and felt completely unprepared for this course. The instructor and mentors kept saying "it'll all make sense soon" and I kept holding out hoping the next lesson would be "the one" where they tied it all together, but it never happened, and eventually 6 weeks passed.

In hindsight, I wish I'd requested a refund.

Out of desperate frustration around week 4, I searched for ways to supplement this course and to do what I set out to do (learn Python), and i discovered coursera's Intro to Python specialization program. This turned out to be much more appropriate for a beginner, and it actually covered much more material in a much shorter time-- if you've got no programming experience and want a more structured educational experience, you might try that instead of RMOTR.

RMOTR's intro to python course is probably great for people who have much more coding experience than I have, and are just looking to learn a little bit of Python to supplement their current skillsets. It is not for true beginners who are looking to learn Python as a first language.

The online environment needs some work: There's a students section and a learn section for individual assignments and for accessing lectures, and it's not clear which is which without loading them. The RMOTR environment for individual assignments is terrible if you need to higher magnification. Zoom is used for lectures, Hangouts and Cloud9 are expected for group work, Github instruction left a lot to be desired, Slack is used for general course information and off-topic memes or offensive conversations... At one point a google calendar went out, too, but I don't think it was ever updated. I highly suggest that RMOTR change their format so that it's more of an all-in-one experience, or lay out all the links, supplementing materials, expectations, and hardware/software requirements in one central location.

Mentors are available on a fairly regular basis to answer questions, which was helpful, but I wish that the material had been presented in a way that I didn't need so much handholding. With Coursera, all I needed to do was review the course materials a little more before figuring out the problems myself. The material really isn't available through RMOTR-- you really have to ask for help if you get stuck and don't have previous Python experience. The assignments for RMOTR are more about making tests pass, rather than about learning to write code.

I took this course because I heard about it through their new partnership with Women Who Code, and I feel like RMOTR has a lot more growing to do before I'd recommend this course or this company to anyone.

I've got many more comments and suggestions but RMOTR should hire me as a consultant if they want my expertise. :)

Response From: Santiago Basulto of RMOTR

Title: Instructor

Friday, Feb 02 2018

Thanks for your feedback. I'll answer between lines. But before that, you think we deserve a 1-star rate? I personally remember helping you on Sundays while working on coding assignments. We have many things to learn and improve, we know it, but I don't the score you gave us is fair.

> After taking the introduction to python course, I'm not sure that the other reviewers took the same course I did.

Well, I don't know, maybe the other +100 people are all wrong! Everybody has their own opinions I guess.

> Because of the scheduled course times and promises of adding projects to our github profiles, I assumed this was a well-structured course with clear goals and expectations, but this course felt disorganized and disjointed. The syllabus is a bulleted list with no description of lessons or assignments, no dates.

Sorry if you felt it didn't follow your expected structure. Our platform has the dates of each one of the classes and the topics covered by those classes. All our students know what they have to work on during each week thanks to it.

> The lectures left me feeling unprepared for the assignments, and the lectures were very short compared to what I expected (often ending quite early). I expected 4 hours of lecture material prepared each week, but at least two of those hours were for working on assigments (as individuals or groups).

We have the right amount of time divided into REAL coding and explanations. We've tested this for over 2 years now.

> Working in groups was extremely inconvenient, and I would have preferred about triple the amount of individual assignments during the first 3-4 weeks of the course, and then work on larger projects as a group (or individual, if preferred) during the last couple weeks once we all got used to working with github and the IDE, and comfortable with the overall flow of the course.

Developing human skills is fundamental for any programmer, and that's why we make our students start working in groups as early as the second week. If you delay it, you're just making it more difficult. If you had issues with simple assignments during the first weeks, do you think it's going to be easier with more complicated projects later?

> There was a distinct lack of awareness or interest in accessibility: transcripts are not provided for the lectures (I asked)

Accessibility is indeed an issue and we're trying to improve it. Full blame taken here.

> there is a heavy reliance on Google hangouts for voice and video communication. The teacher hopped around a lot when sharing his screen, flipflopping between tabs and windows, which made it very difficult to follow.

We try to show a real programming experience, it's not a recorded video. We have to switch from coding to slides to resources and images. It's hard to do it without switching tabs. At least in a live class.

> The slides are provided for the lectures, but they are not super helpful, and they are white text on a blue background, and therefore not easily printable or useful for note-taking

Sorry, I didn't know you wanted to print the slides. I'll keep that in mind for the next ones, providing notes for them. A text version might be useful.

> In hindsight, I wish I'd requested a refund

You should! Please go ahead and do it. You'll be the second we've received after +600 students.

> RMOTR's intro to python course is probably great for people who have much more coding experience than I have, and are just looking to learn a little bit of Python to supplement their current skillsets. It is not for true beginners who are looking to learn Python as a first language.

Probably. We usually recommend free intro level courses like Coursera as preparation for our course. We do real programming, it's not just following videos and it requires extra work.

> Slack is used for general course information and off-topic memes or offensive conversations

If you've felt offended in a Slack conversation, please inform us ASAP. We have a strict code of conduct and we don't tolerate inappropriate comments.

> I highly suggest that RMOTR change their format so that it's more of an all-in-one experience, or lay out all the links, supplementing materials, expectations, and hardware/software requirements in one central location.

We'd love to do this, but it's of course really hard and expensive. We rely in battle tested, professional tools as much as we can.

> Mentors are available on a fairly regular basis to answer questions, which was helpful, but I wish that the material had been presented in a way that I didn't need so much handholding.

I'm glad you appreciate the help of real people. Coursera is good but it's not going to help you take that next step of you writing real code.

> The assignments for RMOTR are more about making tests pass, rather than about learning to write code.

I'm a professional developer and my day to day job is making tests pass.

> I feel like RMOTR has a lot more growing to do before I'd recommend this course or this company to anyone.

True that! Thanks for all your feedback.

> I've got many more comments and suggestions but RMOTR should hire me as a consultant if they want my expertise. :)

I found really interesting how well designed each project was during the course. It was not just a bunch of assignments. They were specially thought to practice each of the concepts learnt during the classes.

I also really liked the way instructors explained topics using slides and sharing screen in their computers. In my old experience with other schools, instructors were teaching concepts by typing sample snippeds that many times were boring or not really giving a good example of the topic we were covering.

Aside from everything else, the human factor involved in RMOTR is probably the greatest aggregated value this school has. I really loved the community and the group of classmates I had.

I like the forced accountability that encouraged me to to a lot of work. I was also pushed out of my comfort zone. I was learning Python at a much slower pace before the class, and now I feel like I have a good foundation to more forward at an accelerated pace.

The schedule is a little too rigorous. But I think that may have a lot to do with me having next to no coding experience. I felt like a lot of the time most of the other students were much further ahead of me while I was catching up. Perhaps in the future, maybe encourage people more and let them know that being behind is okay and that they should not feel intimidated. But in the end, I got a lot out of it so it turned out ok :)

Having mentor help available and group projects was the part I loved the most. I knew this way of working works very well for me, but in previous experiences everything happened in person. Achieving the same great experience in an online environment seems very challenging, but this guys managed to do it pretty well.

I was impressed of the cool platform RMOTR built to foster the collaborative work remotly. I liked the collaborative coding and individual approach of great mentors.

Curriculom in general is good. I liked that they mentioned many times related topics, that maybe were not explained in details, but at least let us know those topics exist and give us the chance to learn them by ourself later.

A good example of that is MongoDB, that is not included in the scope of this couse, but let me know at least a bit about it and allowed me to keep learning by myown.

The instructors were responsive and personable. They actually cared if we understood lessons no matter what level we came into the class as.

Honestly, I don't have any bad things to say about it. I know in this kind of reviews is useful for other students to also read about bad things, or things I didn't like as a student of RMOTR. But, I had such a good experience working with this guys, that I only have good words to say about it.

Mentors were always willing to help and pushing us to go for the next challenge. I would have never kept myself as accountable if it wasn't because of the pre defined schedule and the weekly sessions.

I had the chance to talk a lot with Jason, and he is a great mentor. I used to be frustrated very easily in the past, but having someone like Jason helping me on my side made me feel a lot more confident of what I can achieve.

One small suggestion. I would have liked for the slides to be printer-friendly.

I really liked the variety of coding projects, and they way how they were structured to tackle specific topics covered in the class.

There was only one real class a week. When taking a class, I mean to be taught by the teachers. During that class a lot of topics were explained, and sometimes it was hard to pay attention and keep the pace during the two hours of class. I would maybe split the class into a few days, and mix them with projects to practice the covered concepts.

Working in groups with other people remotly was great. I'm from India, and don't have much chances to learn in my local city. RMOTR gave me the chance to share a classroom with folk from the main cities in the US, and that's an incredible opportunity.

The only thing is that there is not enough time to complete the pre-readings if the individual taking the course is a full time employee somewhere, so it's very important to specify that this course if for people who can work on this full time. Other than that it's great.

Working in groups with other people from all around the world, from home, was simply amazing.

I didn't feel like there was enough time to complete most of the assignments, but that's probably associated to my bussy weekly schedule. It's know that it's an intensive course, so I should have reserved more time to commit in the extra readings/coding.

I think it's a great approach. If anything, I would say that having a little more time for readings, and having supplementary material for subjects that are not central to the course but are necessary for projects would help (e.g. I would have worked through a SQL tutorial before the last week had I known it would be needed.) Also as I mentioned on the call, I think materials on debugging, linting and all of that fun stuff would be a great help. Some of this I learned from other students, but that is hit or miss.

I want to enroll for the more advanced course as well. This methodology definitely made my learn a lot in a short time.

I didn't feel like the coding exercises in the homework assignments on the learn site were very helpful. I'm not sure what would make them better.

I liked the process a lot. Knowing that we had an opportunity to ask questions in class about the reading topics, and knowing that we would be using the concepts we were reading and discussing for our coding sessions provided good motivation to prepare, and the class was structured so we could prepare well.
The readings were very helpful, but they were hard to get done. I take a while to process what I read, and it would have been helpful if the readings had been available earlier. I think if they had been posted a full week before the class sessions, I would have been ready to ask more questions in class.

News

News

Our latest on RMOTR

Phil Wright studied math in college, and took a job in manufacturing after graduation. He started teaching himself Python to help automate manufacturing processes, but needed more guidance; so he enrolled in RMOTR’s online Advanced Python Programming course. Phil explains why he wanted to learn remotely in a collaborative environment where he could communicate regularly with instructors and students, tells us about his extra RMOTR capstone project that expanded his skills, and talks about his new job as a software engineer at FoxGuard Solutions!

Q&A

What were you up to before RMOTR?

I got a mathematics degree, with a big focus on math theory. After graduation, I went to work for a local manufacturing company. The work was related to customization and optimization of their products and processes. In college, I took some courses that introduced me to scientific computing resources, like MATLAB and Mathematica, and took some very basic programming courses, so I had a slight working knowledge of a couple of programming languages.

Once I started working for the manufacturing company, I saw a number of ways that coding tools could be used to automate processes, and I wanted to learn more about how to use those tools. I started learning Python, largely because of how accessible it was and because of the supportive online community of people who were learning and sharing resources. Over a few years, I built up basic Python skills, and I knew some of the basics of control flow, but I was having difficulty grasping certain features of the language. So I started looking for resources to help me learn those more technical aspects of the language in a guided environment.

Why did you choose RMOTR over other online coding courses? Have you taken other online courses?

I have taken some other courses through sites like Udacity and Coursera to improve my programming skills. What really drew me to the RMOTR courses was the level of communication between the instructors, students and mentors, that the classes were taught in real time, and that the projects were done in real-time, collaborating with other students. I also liked that RMOTR would allow me to ask questions and have immediate resources to get answers. Finally, I needed an online course that would allow me to work from home – that was a big deal for me – and also outside of work hours, because I was working full-time.

What was the RMOTR application process like for you? Since it was an advanced Python course, did you have to demonstrate prior knowledge?

I had to submit an application that included a short development test. It tested the basics of the language constructs and some fundamentals of Python. For the Django course, there was a similar test.

How many people were you studying with? Was your class diverse in terms of gender, race, life and career backgrounds?

My cohort for the Python course was around 18 to 20 students. There were two separate classes running at the same time, which were divided up for logistical reasons. For the Django course, we had 6 to 8 students. In both classes there was a fairly good mix of students and professionals. There were a few people who were interested in learning the language for their current jobs; others were self-employed and wanted the skills to offer to clients. In the Python class there were a few women, and there was one woman in my Django cohort.

There were people from a few different countries too. In the Python class we had a man from India, which was a lot of fun. It was great to be able to interact with people from all over the world, and around the US. I live in Virginia, but I got to learn with students from St. Louis, Texas, California – all over the place.

What was your learning experience like at RMOTR? Tell us about the teaching style.

Both courses were each four weeks long. We were assigned readings the week before we met for the first time, and then for each following week. Each week we would have one scheduled, two-hour lecture session, where everyone would meet online and the instructor would give a presentation related to the readings that we had done. We would interact with the instructor, ask questions, and go through a few examples.

Later in the week, there would be three separate, three-hour coding sessions. During each coding session an instructor or mentor would present a new project to us, then we would split into groups, and go into separate Google Hangouts and work as a team to code on the project. If we had a question during the session, we could message the mentors on Slack and a mentor would jump into our Hangout to help. Once we submitted our solutions through Github, we would receive another group’s work to code review, and our work would be code reviewed by another group.

We learned a lot through the projects, and through reviewing other people’s code. We needed to think critically about the design decisions they made.

Were there time constraints? Did you have to set aside a certain amount of time to do RMOTR?

In total we were working about 20 hours per week.

Our lecture session was one evening during the week; two of the coding sessions were on weeknights, and the third coding session was on Saturday mornings. It worked very well; it meant we had one day between each coding session, and one evening off, so we could catch up on reading or have a much-needed break.

How many instructors or mentors did you have, and how did you communicate with them?

The two primary instructors were Santiago and Martin, who are the RMOTR founders, and then we had 3 to 5 mentors during each coding session in addition to Santiago and Martin. We would use Slack to communicate with them – if we had a question we would send a link to our hangout, and a mentor would jump in to help.

Outside of coding session times, there were usually one or two people available, or we could schedule something if no one was immediately available.

What is your favorite project that you built in a RMOTR course?

At the end of the advanced Python course, there was an optional demo day project, where students could form a small group and work on a project for a couple of weeks. We had to submit a proposal for what our project would do, and build a minimum viable product. Then Santiago and Martin invited people from the software development industry to a demo session where we could demo the project and answer questions about decisions we made.

My group built a website which listed open software development jobs, and provided statistics around the numbers of job postings over time for jobs users are looking for. It also pulled in reviews of companies from the glassdoor.com website. It was definitely a challenge to do in the amount of time that we had, but I really enjoyed it.

What sort of career advice did the team at RMOTR give you?

Santiago and Martin gave us guidance on how to seek out the types of jobs that we would be prepared for after the courses, suggested some good websites to look at, and encouraged us to collaborate and share our successes with other students. They also talked about resume writing, and encouraged us to come to them with questions related to that. Alumni are still able to interact with current students and previous alumni through the Slack channel – there is a lot of discussion on there about job search tips, and about programming questions, which is really cool.

How did these two RMOTR courses help you with your career?

One reason I chose to do the demo day project was because I was looking for a new job. Late last year, I found a new job working as a full-time software engineer! I know that the practices encouraged by RMOTR are things that this new company found attractive in me as a candidate. For example, I now have a solid understanding of test driven development, good knowledge of continuous integration practices, experience doing code reviews, and working with Github – I learned all of that at RMOTR.

Where are you working as a developer now and what’s your role?

I’m working for FoxGuard Solutions, a local Virginia security software development firm. The team I’m working on produces web-based tools for security management for client assets. The work has involved doing programming in a number of different languages. I work on a team with about eight other developers, and we focus on test driven development, which I learned a great deal about at RMOTR. We have a solid continuous integration procedure in place for development, as well as a very structured code review process. A few of the tools we use at this company are the same or similar to tools we learned with RMOTR.

Are you using Python or Django – the languages you studied at RMOTR? How has your company trained you on new technology?

I’ve done some work in Python at my new job, and I’m still using it extensively on personal projects, but it’s not the primary language at this company. Most of the work I do is in C# which I did not have a ton of experience in before I got the job. But the languages that I learned at RMOTR helped prepare me for learning C#.

FoxGuard Solutions trained me in C#. There were some language-specific exercises I went through for a few months when I started at the company, and I was encouraged to interact with other developers on the team when I had questions. So it was a mix of using reference material, training resources, and asking questions, which is similar to how the RMOTR courses were structured.

Since I’ve started doing more software development, I’ve learned that the process of running into questions or issues as I’m developing is something that is always going to happen, and it’s good to know how to find the answers yourself. That was something I really appreciated about the RMOTR course – when we had a question, the mentors or instructors would answer the direct question, and also point out where deeper documentation could be found. When you have one question about a topic, you’re most likely going to have more in the future.

How has your previous background been useful in your new job?

At my previous company I learned a lot about time management and prioritization. In manufacturing there is a heavy emphasis on efficiency and lean practices, and that’s helped me see how and why tasks at my new job are prioritized the way they are. I also brought knowledge of how and when to communicate about questions or hangups that may arise, when those need to be asked, and how to determine who to communicate with. A lot of that was very key to the work we were doing on the manufacturing side and has helped a ton in this new job.

What’s been the biggest challenge or roadblock in your journey to becoming a full-time software developer?

One of my biggest challenges is part of my own personality: I love to have a complete and rigorous understanding of a topic before I start working on it. That’s held me back in some situations. I’ve had to learn to accept the gaps I have. One of the things my team talks about is personal technical debt, which refers to gaps in your knowledge that you’re aware of, which you deliberately allow to be there, so that you can be functional with a certain tool or topic. Being aware of that has been very useful.

What advice do you have for people making a career change through a coding bootcamp?

Establish concrete goals for yourself and look for programs that address those goals specifically. Don’t be afraid to do research into a number of coding programs, be willing to re-evaluate those goals and work hard to accomplish them. I can’t speak highly enough about RMOTR’s courses. As long as you’re willing to work hard and invest time and effort, you’ll certainly benefit greatly from them. It’s especially difficult to gain additional skills on top of a full-time job, but it won’t be that difficult forever – it’s worth the extra effort!

About The Author

Imogen is a writer and content producer who loves writing about technology and education. Her background is in journalism, writing for newspapers and news websites. She grew up in England, Dubai and New Zealand, and now lives in Brooklyn, NY.